Wihtikow
by nakala
Summary: As he watched her legs give way under her, as she crumbled to her knees, as her lifeless eyes rolled into the back of her head, as that very head disappeared behind the bramble to no doubt smack solidly on the winter hardened ground, the air flew from his lungs and his heart stalled. I do not own cover artwork.
1. Chapter 1

**First Sleepy Hollow Fic so I hope you like it. Title may be temporary. I kind of like it but it's a bit too literal for my taste. Anyway…**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but what popped into my head. Everything else belongs to the owners. **

**Chapter 1**

She stood before him with unfocused, vacant eyes sunken into her skull. Her countenance conjured bile from the pit of his stomach.

They had been working together for over six months and seen more creatures of doom than could be counted over the course of that time, but he had never seen her as haggard and trouble worn as this. She was thinner than the last time he saw her, eerily so considering that was when they'd gotten separated in the woods a mere two hours ago. What could have transpired between then and now utterly baffled him.

His eyes quickly roved over her sweat soaked, pallid skin, which held none of the rich luminescence that usually coated her milk chocolate, smooth skin.

From his distance, he could see that she wasn't present. The light behind her eyes was irrefutably absent. The walking dead came to mind. Worse than all of this, worse than her feeble, staggering from the forest was the blood that soiled her shirt from just beneath her bust to the hem terminating in corpulent drops of the sanguine fluid. Each droplet plummeted to the ground with an inaudible crash that chilled Crane to the marrow of his bones.

"Lieutenant Mills!"

The words never left his mouth nor did his boot, clad feet respond to the mental signal to drop the weapon he was brandishing and go help Miss Mills. Instead, fear gripped his senses rendering him immobile.

"This cannot be happening."

His very tether to this strange world he'd awakened to was dying before his eyes. Before he got the chance – snapping himself from his premature misery, Ichabod abandoned any sense of decorum, tossed his weapon, and ran full hilt screaming and raving like a madman for Lieutenant Mills, Abigail, to hold on.

"I am coming. Please hold on! Abigail," he bellowed uttering her given name for the first time sans title until the wind left his sails. "Please don't die," were the words sputtered under his breath when he saw her weakened frame tumble listlessly into the brush where the edge of the mysterious forest met the free world.

As he watched her legs give way under her, as she crumbled to her knees, as her lifeless eyes rolled into the back of her head, as that very head disappeared behind the bramble to no doubt smack solidly on the winter hardened ground, the air flew from his lungs and his heart stalled. But that didn't stop him. The living relic skidded to the young officer clutching her in his arms, before allowing his usually calmer mind to prevail. Ignoring the eighteenth century man inside of him, the former Revolutionary War spy lifted the woman's shirt to examine the wound, praying it was not as dire as he knew it was.

The sight before his eyes elicited an uncharacteristic groaning growl from the effervescent gentleman. The wound was a gaping hole gouged into her abdomen breeching the layer of muscle beyond her soft flawless skin. It had begun to congeal along the edges giving the appearance of an injury older than humanly possible.

"Please, Abigail, please open your eyes." Crane muttered to himself as he caressed the side of her face. He wouldn't shake her, despite this ardent desire; it wouldn't work. In all the crevices of his eidetic mind he knew nothing he could do at this point would open the bright, peppery eyes of the woman in his arms. Though it might not have been any significant help, he did apply pressure to the leaking wound. Through his grief, stricken haze he remembered to call out for help.

He, Jenny, and Abigail purposed into the woods to track down the week's big, deadly ugly. Stubborn Abbie had ventured off while Jenny and Crane searched one of the many seemingly innocuous caves. When they'd exited the cave, the Brit was instantly consumed with worry when he didn't see his partner, while Lieutenant Mill's sister had been incorrigibly furious. When he'd finally calmed Jenny's bubbling fury, they set off in the direction they thought Abbie might have gone.

After nearly two hours of searching with no sign of the young officer, Jenny called the police with a fabricated emergency that would hopefully hail an ambulance; he could only hope.

Ichabod checked the incapacitated woman's carotid for a pulse, which he found to be faint but present. Sighing in relief, he thanked the heavens there was still life in his dear friend.

Jenny and Crane had bit the bullet and left the center of the forest to make sure Abbie had not found her way back to the squad car. It was a last resort kind of thing that neither really agreed to but did nonetheless. Jenny was returning from the location of the car when his weary eyes finally left Abbie.

"She's…"

"I saw, Ickie. Is she…"

No," he swallowed deeply, always one to speak the truth, "Not yet."

Jenny choked back tears and anger. "My stupid sister just had to take care of things on her own."

Crane didn't have time for Miss Jenny's misplaced aggression. "Help?" questioned the often verbose gentleman too ill at ease to find his beloved words.

"They're behind me with the stretcher." She knelt down beside the emotionally wrought man. "She's going to be okay. My sister's resilient and as stubborn as a mule. She – she'll be okay." _She'll be okay. _

Thirty seconds after Jenny joined Ichabod, the paramedics arrived making quick work of tending to Abbie's weeping wound and getting her onto the stretcher. Within three minutes they had Mills hooked to an IV and ready to be loaded into the ambulance.

"Ichabod what happened here?" Captain Frank Irving was still in motion as he ran to the ambulance where they were transferring his police officer into the ambulance.

Sure, the captain deserved to know what had occurred; however, Ichabod had more pressing matters to attend. Jenny could handle him.

"Hold one moment, I will be accompanying you."

"Sir, you can't-"

"Travelling physician, I am not leaving her side. Now, if you will excuse me, I _will _be accompanying Miss Mills to the infirmary." Crane nearly growled grabbing the paramedic's arm.

Not wanting to fight with an obviously psychotic person, the paramedic allowed Crane into the back of the ambulance before securing the doors.

The sounds surrounding Ichabod were deafening. The whirring of the siren, the slow beep, beep, beep of the portable EKG, the loud roar of the engine, and squeal of the wheels as they barreled down the highway was all foreign to him. The only thing he understood about any of it was that these machines were keeping the little spitfire alive.

Blocking out everything except the constant beep of the infernal machine that Crane surmised monitored the rhythm of his unconscious partner's heart, he reached for her hand wishing he could summon the words to bring her back. Wishing for anything that could keep her from passing into the afterlife. He couldn't dream up the solution to this quandary with two of his brains; so, he settled for taking her limp, cold hand into his warm one. He stroked his thumb over her icy knuckles.

Those small knuckles had connected with his arm numerous times in the past. Just this morning as they were leaving her apartment, she'd lightly punched him when he'd, once again, questioned her about her ex, Detective Morales. He was really curious as to whether there were some residual lingerings given their precarious separation. Abigail refrained from answering; she simply rolled her big, brown eyes then playfully socked him in his arm as she'd come accustomed to doing over the past few months when Crane inquired of things she'd rather evade.

Her hand jerked from his hand snatching him from his reverie. Before him, Abbie thrashed about violently; the whites of her eyes flashed him from underneath half closed eyelids.

_Shock?! Oh God do not let this be._

Mills flailed disturbingly for a couple of minutes…

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Then nothing.

All movement halted immediately.

The only movements Crane observed were the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she breathed laboriously.

Then…

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Nothing.

Her chest didn't rise again.

That blessed machine that alerted him of the life still flowing in Lieutenant Mill's body was no longer keeping time with a beating heart but had settled into one monotonous tone.

Beeeeep.

**Thanks for reading. Having problems with Crane's part but I'm trying my best. Hope you liked it and check back for the next chapter. **

**nakala**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

She loitered at the mouth of the cave for as long as she could hear her sister's and Ichabod's footsteps. Once they were out of earshot, she defied their commands. She would not be backup for her socially inept sister and the even more socially deformed Crane. She was the officer here, not them. Besides, she wasn't going to stray far, just investigate the surrounding area. Maybe there was another entrance to the cave or some prints of the abomination they were tracking.

Dismantled corpses had been popping up all over town. More recently, the bodies – if you could call them that – had been turning up on the edge of the same forest where she and Jenny had been found. Captain Irving assigned her, and by proxy, Crane to the case because there was no way this didn't have anything to do with the four horsemen apocalypse situation.

The first body she'd seen caused her to regurgitate on site, which until that day had never happened. She wasn't so affected when she'd seen her first decapitated vic. However, these bodies had seen much more torment than an axe to the neck. The eyes were missing, apparently scooped out by some crude instrument. What she could not understand was how the same person had lost part of his jaw. From her vantage point, she could see from his canine to his last molar. The smell was horrendous. Bile was everywhere and severed guts were exposed from the open abdomen. She could see through to his spine. Many internal organs were missing, and so were most of his limbs. The fragment of a person only possessed a left upper arm, a left thigh, and part of a head – the skull had been smashed open and the brain was missing. There was no clue of where the missing appendages could be.

"Where are you?"

Peering out into the dense forest Abbie hoped desperately that they could find and kill this thing tonight. By far this was the worst of them. The death count for this past week alone had exceeded all the deaths since their quest to save the world began. Fruitless in her findings, Abbie turned to make her way back to the cave that her gut told her was not where the big bad resided.

She was ten feet away from the opening of the cave when a warm acrid breeze tousled her hair. Though her mind told her to flee, her feet stuttered to a stop. Her brow began to mist with sweat, as did the palms of her trembling hands. Had the rushing pound of blood in her ears not been so loud, she might have heard the drip drop of blood and spittle land in the dead leaves littering the ground behind her. Had she heard that tell-tell sign of imminent danger, perhaps she would have snapped from her panic-stricken daze to yell for help. As it was, she didn't, and when cold, scaly arms encircled her with thick pointy claws threatening to break her skin where they stuck, the shriek she knew should be raging from her opened mouth lodged itself in her throat.

Before she could get her wits about herself and be the lieutenant she was trained to be, a few words of what she can only assume was Latin hissed into the wind dissolving everything into darkness.

Her senses came to before her strength and courage allowed her eyes to open. She lay in a prone position, held down by a wide band that strapped both her arms to her sides. She was trapped. Moaning then a clicking pop burst into Abigail's ears eliminating any doubt she wanted to feel about her whereabouts. The next thing she became acutely aware of was rotted, dying flesh. The area smelled of decay, decomposition, and death. She kept her eyes closed as she sucked in a slow deep breath trying not to give away her wakened state. If she could hold her breath long enough, she wouldn't have to breathe in the fetid odor that churned her stomach with bile rising alacrity.

Crunch. Pop. Bones separating at the joint. Flesh torn from human bone. Munching, mashing, and mushing of human. A human meal. She was next. _If there isn't some other poor soul here waiting to be eaten, I am going to be next. I'll be eaten alive. _A rueful chuckle echoes in her mind. _Well _I_ found him. _

Wendigo, wihtikow, according to the Algonquian. This was their best guess after scrambling through so many myths and lore on cannibalistic creatures. It wasn't until they'd – or rather Ichabod – read a few eyewitness accounts of the carnage left behind by this particular monster that they'd settled on the wihtikow, as Crane liked call it. Almost perfectly, the descriptions matched those of the crime scenes she'd seen over the past couple of weeks. Now, lying in his cave, she knew without a shred of doubt what was leaving dismembered bodies all over town. What would possibly leave her mangled body at the edge of the woods if she didn't find a way out.

One particular lore she'd found on Wikipedia, described the monster as being insatiable, which explained the high number of ravaged remains littering Sleepy Hollow. Given her hometown's affinity for the demonic and satanic, Abbie wasn't shocked to find that the animal they were looking for was of demonic origin. A human being possessed by a malevolent, increasingly unsatisfied demon. The more it consumed the more it craved. An unending hunger requiring human. It was something Abbie thought could only exist in nightmares; however, despite her skeptical nature, she had grown to accept that things that go bump in the night bumped around freely in the quaint little town she called home. This monster had been bumping around eluding her and Crane for weeks. This was the only cursed being they'd found difficult to track. Now, _he'd_ tracked them down and _captured_ her.

She really wished she had listened to Crane. He only had her best interest in mind when he told her to guard the cave. He always wanted what was best for her. He was right, though she was remiss to admit it; Jenny had better training than her all around. If they were to encounter wihtikow, their most formidable foe, he and Jenny stood the best chance of taking it down. Not that either of them had any idea how to do just that. But she was the cop, and this was her case not Jenny's. Despite their amicable reconciliation, there were still undercurrents of sibling rivalry, and she didn't want her sister out doing her, especially in front of Crane. Even in this impossible predicament, Abbie found herself comparing her herself to her sister. Thinking to herself that Jenny wouldn't be afraid. Jenny would find a way out because she was some secret, highly trained _freedom fighter_.

Summoning all the courage – mostly undefeated stubbornness – she could muster, she cracked open her eye to spy out her environment. She was definitely in a cave. She was not on some sort of table as she thought but on the floor. The room was dimly lit. Hovering in the corners farthest from her were balls of light. Her heart froze. There was nothing physically producing the flames. Magic? Demon powers? Either way she was screwed. It was going to be near impossible to break out of this death trap.

Her eyelids fell heavily in defeat. She was going to die. Not only was she going to die, she was going to be eaten to death.

_I am not dying like this. Shot in the line of fire, I can do, will gladly do, but this. Not this._

A cop has to have as many details as possible to plan properly, and she has some planning to do. Lieutenant Mills opened her eyes again, just a sliver, to assess the situation further. Nervous tremors traveled down her spine, but before she was overtaken by them, she steadied herself taking purchase of her body. Desperately, she hoped against all that she knew was true that the sight before her wasn't real.

A gaunt, emaciated creature was crouched over a half-eaten body. Flickering light revealed ashen skin soaked in blood and pus from suppurations all over the Godforsaken thing. Instead of some hulking mass built like a bulldozer, what she saw was a shriveled, rickety figure. Desiccated skin stretched tensely over bulging bones. Ribs pushed against skin so tightly she could count each one. Hipbones jutted out at odd angles.

She was next. There was no denying that.

_I am next. _

A tear trickled from her clenched eyes.

The moment the offensive show of emotion puddle in her ear the incessant, ambient chomping in the background ceased.

She couldn't breathe; she didn't want to breathe. He knew; she didn't know how he knew, but he did and her time was up.

Claws gripped her hair with an excruciatingly firm tug digging into her scalp. She could feel the skin beneath her hair breaking. Its other hand scaled over her face. Eyes, nose, lips. One pointy talon poked her jugular. Tap, tap, scrape. Tap, tap, scrape. A quick scratch. A warning. Barely breaking her skin, but foreshadowing the torture to come.

Its icy hands roamed from her neck down over her chest to rest over her belly. There it examined the area pressing and poking as if it was looking for something. Abbie didn't move a millimeter. Her breath burned her lungs crying to be freed, but she held on. If she could just remain still then maybe he would go back to this previous meal, but his insistence told her that wasn't going to happen.

She was going to be eaten.

The wind blew from her lungs and her eyes bulged as she felt something pierce the skin of her stomach. The pain was agonizing, but it became a faint memory when she felt the damned creature's tongue lapping at the blood purging from the shallow wound. Teeth dug into the edge pulling away flesh ripping a roaring screech from the petite officer. Blackness ate away at her vision. She was slipping away.

Her fate was sealed.

As the light receded from her eyes, the monster jerked into her view freezing her heart. The last image Abbie saw before she faded into darkness was a withered face with skin plastered tightly over the bone and blackened eyeballs were pushed back deep into large sockets. The most horrifying thing was the jagged teeth framed by tattered bloody lips stretched into a gruesome sneer.

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Her eyes swung open as she regained consciousness. Frantically she tried to free herself from whatever was holding her down but nothing was there. She was trapped by some magical binding.

_Am I going crazy?_

Although her first instinct was to cry out for help, she dared not scream. He could be away and that would only alert him. Instead, Abbie struggled against her invisible restraint attempting to slide out but when she'd made it half way out her captor appeared digging his claws into the hole in her side much deeper than the first time. Wafting out of awareness, she felt the wihtikow's teeth sink into her side once again.

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For hours, she waded between barely awake and unconsciousness. Time and time again, she was greeted with sharp teeth and the feeling of her life being drained from her.

"Abbie."

It had been days since she'd heard her name, and it had been months since she heard her name issued from his lips.

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Weakly, she peeled her eyes open.

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"Corbin?"

**So that's it, chapter 2. I haven't finished chapter 3 yet, too many avenues to take so much to cover and I don't want this turning into some massive fic. This is a little suspenseful, thrillerish, and horror-like. My first time doing that so I hope I'm doing a good job. I only have like 4 reviews so it's hard to tell. **

**So let me know if you liked it, and keep an eye out for chapter 3 **_**hopefully **_**coming soon. **

**nakala**


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